Israel Active

The Indian government has invited leading Israeli water technology companies to take part in efforts to clean India’s most important river. A delegation of Indian research institutes, water technology companies and other relevant agencies will come to Israel to learn about the Israeli water and sewage purification technologies.

In semi-arid Eastern Sri Lanka, Singhalese, Tamil and Muslim populations struggle over meagre water resources. The head of Sarvodaya, the largest NGO in Sri Lanka, has come to Israel to learn about Friends of the Earth’s cross-border Good Water Neighbours project and Israeli Foreign Ministry’s Mashav program.

The United Nations has granted Israeli advertising company Baumann Ber Rivnay a gold medal for its campaign, Blood Relations. The campaign brought bereaved Israelis and Palestinians together for a blood drive. Blood donated from Israelis went to Palestinian patients and vice versa.

A young Arab woman arrived at the Binyamin IDF post with her 12-day-old baby, who was suffering from severe breathing difficulty. The IDF Home Front Command soldiers treated and stabilized the baby and then called an emergency ambulance to evacuate the infant to a nearby hospital in Ramallah. Over the past two weeks, paramedics at the post have treated three similar cases.

On Israel’s Independence Day, an East Jerusalem Arab received a citation of excellence from President Shimon Peres. In his community, only his immediate family know that he is a medic in the Israeli army. Last week two of his brothers also joined the IDF.

The performance of Molière’s “The Bourgeois Gentleman” by fifteen Bedouin teenagers was the first time a Bedouin troupe had staged a Western-style play in Israel. The Hura Community Youth Group created a hilarious portrayal, in the jargon of modern Bedouin Arabic.

Israel’s annual green globe awards event recognized environmental excellence in the governmental, business, and civilian sectors. And the Arab Alzahraa school northeast of Tel Aviv was among this year’s nine recipients. The school has an ecological garden and solar power station.

The blogs editor of Israel Hayom has written an excellent article highlighting some of Israel’s contributions to the Arab and Muslim worlds.

Tikvot is a non-profit volunteer-based organization that rehabilitates Israel's victims of terror through sport. Tikvot ("Hopes" in Hebrew) has proved that sport provides our heroes with hope, giving paraplegics and amputees the power to restore self-confidence and dignity.

On the Sunday before Independence Day, residents of 21 Israel cities turned off their lights for one hour to conserve energy. A concert in Tel Aviv’s Rabin Square was powered solely by renewable energy sources. Israel’s government recently installed energy-efficient computers in all ministries.